Spark peering

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#2172451 3-Feb-2019 21:46

4.6s - 5.8s via spark, over 10 refreshes, about 165ms ping

3.1s - 3.8s via vpn, over 10 refreshes, about 6ms ping

48% longer - 52% longer

just saying

freitasm

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#2172455 3-Feb-2019 21:56

Looking at our traffic, about 1/4 of sessions are from Spark IP addresses. However we are still a small site so in the big scheme only a very small part of Cloudflare traffic and pretty irrelevant for Spark.

I think it will be hard finding a significant site of interest in New Zealand that uses Cloudflare.

djtOtago

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#2172458 3-Feb-2019 22:01

Geekzone home page. 10 Refreshes Fastest 1.08s - Slowest 1.30s

cf-ray: 4a33b1ba3b5fa41d-AKL

ISP Slingshot. Test was also done over Wi-Fi.

michaelmurfy

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#2172459 3-Feb-2019 22:07

Jase2985:

4.6s - 5.8s via spark, over 10 refreshes, about 165ms ping

3.1s - 3.8s via vpn, over 10 refreshes, about 6ms ping

48% longer - 52% longer

just saying

I've got Apache Guacamole running behind Cloudflare which is essentially for a SSH shell (so I can connect to some firewalled servers) - I get over 1sec RTT on Spark vs around 30ms RTT either a VPN or 2degrees. It is literally unusable on Spark so have to VPN out.

The Guacamole server is hosted in NZ on my home connection. It goes via CF Auckland --> Australia --> Tokyo --> Australia --> NZ. As you can imagine, this isn't ideal.

Geekzone is hosted at Datacom so same sort of path. It would be nice for NZ traffic to stay within NZ especially when I know Mauricio does have a focus on speed - this sort of things is fully out of his control. With Cloudflare Argo enabled this does help the speed on Spark (as it takes a more direct route to Hong Kong over Cloudflare's own network) but still, this isn't ideal as his servers are based in NZ and the general audience is also based in NZ.

The site is still quick - don't get me wrong but going from an ISP that sends traffic to the Cloudflare POP in Auckland to one that sends via Hong Kong is actually quite noticeable.

I'm not going to bang on the subject anymore. It is up to Spark to provide the best experience for its customers.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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Kraven

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#2172460 3-Feb-2019 22:10

Thought I'd try a few websites that use Cloudflare to see where they are being served from on BigPipe (Spark):

geekzone.co.nz: HKG
bunnings.co.nz: SYD
mitre10.co.nz: SYD
ascent.co.nz: HKG
thewarehouse.co.nz: NRT (Japan)
hauraki.co.nz: NRT

Tip: you can go to /cdn-cgi/trace on any website using the Cloudflare CDN to find out what location you're being served from. eg. www.geekzone.co.nz/cdn-cgi/trace

freitasm

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#2172461 3-Feb-2019 22:10

michaelmurfy:

It is up to Spark to provide the best experience for its customers.

QFT.

yitz

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#2172462 3-Feb-2019 22:15

I get
geekzone.co.nz: ~~HKG~~LAX
bunnings.co.nz: SYD
mitre10.co.nz: SYD
ascent.co.nz: ~~HKG~~LAX
thewarehouse.co.nz: ~~NRT (Japan)~~LAX
hauraki.co.nz: ~~NRT~~LAX

Sites served from SYD are noticeably faster.

Might need to ask bunnings and mitre 10 what's the secret? lol

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noroad

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#2172468 3-Feb-2019 22:46

cisconz:

There was a valid cost reason for why they pulled out in the first place.

No, Telecom and TelstraClear both de-peered to force all the smaller providers to pay one or the other for transit. It was an entirely commercial/anti-competitive response to other international transit providers entering the market. The fact they can still get away with it today is a ridiculous.

Talkiet

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#2172515 3-Feb-2019 23:35

I think the Cloudflare Peering Portal puts it better than you. (from https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-peering-portal-beta/ )

So every network should peer all the time?

Peering still has some costs - particularly an administrative burden. The Network Administrators have to agree the details. Commercial teams may require contractual agreements. The link has to be monitored. Therefore, most large networks will have a peering policy and prioritize peering with the networks with which they exchange the most data and will thus generate the most mutual value.

I promise you I look at various CDNs and Peering opportunities, and my/our approach and constraints are pretty well summed up in that Cloudflare quote above.

It's not personal and our current lack of Cloudflare peering isn't driven by absolute policy, it's just that there are still far better ways to spend our limited time and money given the tiny amount of traffic it represents. I'm working on several at the moment. From the graphs I can see as well, the current situation seems to be a Cloudflare change - I am not sure I could characterise it as a problem - but normally a lot more traffic is sourced from Sydney and the performance is fine.

FYI, the performance for some other, much larger sites (many orders of magnitude larger) than Geekzone are better on Spark than most other NZ ISPs precisely because we do prioritise optimising networks that our customers use heavily.

It feels like there's a huge amount of negative focus and given this site is one affected, that's totally understandable - it's a shame however there's rarely any credit for the things we do that benefit a vast number of our customers that the other ISPs don't do.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

yitz

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#2172518 3-Feb-2019 23:49

Do you think it could also be an IPv6 thing? I only experience the issue on two NZ ISPs who do not have IPv6 access enabled.

Some sort of Cloudflare punishment for not having IPv6 by a quirk in how their routing system works... I have a suspicion it is not just peering related.

noroad

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#2172540 4-Feb-2019 06:47

Talkiet:

I think the Cloudflare Peering Portal puts it better than you. (from https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-peering-portal-beta/ )

So every network should peer all the time?

Peering still has some costs - particularly an administrative burden. The Network Administrators have to agree the details. Commercial teams may require contractual agreements. The link has to be monitored. Therefore, most large networks will have a peering policy and prioritize peering with the networks with which they exchange the most data and will thus generate the most mutual value.

I promise you I look at various CDNs and Peering opportunities, and my/our approach and constraints are pretty well summed up in that Cloudflare quote above.

It's not personal and our current lack of Cloudflare peering isn't driven by absolute policy, it's just that there are still far better ways to spend our limited time and money given the tiny amount of traffic it represents. I'm working on several at the moment. From the graphs I can see as well, the current situation seems to be a Cloudflare change - I am not sure I could characterise it as a problem - but normally a lot more traffic is sourced from Sydney and the performance is fine.

FYI, the performance for some other, much larger sites (many orders of magnitude larger) than Geekzone are better on Spark than most other NZ ISPs precisely because we do prioritise optimising networks that our customers use heavily.

It feels like there's a huge amount of negative focus and given this site is one affected, that's totally understandable - it's a shame however there's rarely any credit for the things we do that benefit a vast number of our customers that the other ISPs don't do.

Cheers - N

Your not seriously claiming your GGI engineers don't have time (and have not for several years) to patch a port to NZIX/Auckland-IX in Mayoral drive and setup a couple of BGP sessions? Remember several of us were around in the days when the same GGI was peered and were forced to de-peer so that's just not going to wash. Also, there is peering already in place with at least two others you conventionality have adequate time to peer with, so your protestations of hardship are a very thin smoke screen. In the time taken to read and reply to these posts you could send an email to your GGI team authorizing them to peer and the fix would be under way. As someone who organizes peering in locations all over the world I know very well it is not a difficult technical or logistical challenge and so do you.

Hey, if you don't want the negative focus it would take very little effort to reverse the years of anti-competitive behavior, especially as you want all the rest of us to play nice and accept all the traffic from your new commercial streaming platform. But then you are relying on the fact that smaller players generally care more about customer performance than historic commercial policies. Most of us look at all traffic, all customer needs big or small and want it to work best for our customers, but I guess that's the latent incumbent attitude that still exists eh.

Seriously dude, don't try and play the the oh, its so hard and we don't have time line that is totally unbelievable, on man band service providers can peer in days and you have a whole dedicated routing sub department. The primary public peering exchanges are all physically in your own buildings, so the effort is minimal to peer. Next you will be saying your tax returns are under audit and that's why you can't release some packets, its just as believable.

noroad

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#2172543 4-Feb-2019 07:10

For those wondering why why this Cloudflare traffic is being served out of Japan instead of Sydney the answer is very simple. Despite what people think (obviously applying logic and common sense, but these do not apply) Spark does not actually peer in Sydney either (unless something has changed from last time I looked, but I doubt it). Spark buys transit from NTT who do peer. NTT is a Japan based provider and they also peer in, well Japan so as one can imagine it would be very easy for Cloudflare to see the Japanese path as just as good as the Sydney one.

noroad

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#2172544 4-Feb-2019 07:14

OK, here is a very simple fix for all of these issues now and going forward. There are some government lurkers on this list yes? You can solve this issue, and make the New Zealand Internet industry more robust and competitive for years to come by actioning one simple thing. Include in all government contracts involving the internet going forward that any service provider that does not openly peer New Zealand based traffic is not eligible to bid for the contract.

problem solved!

Talkiet

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#2172595 4-Feb-2019 08:43

noroad:

[snipped angry rant]

Wow. Several factual inaccuracies and an oblique comparison of Spark to Trump. I'm out. While there is a mature, fact based and sensible response in me, you don't deserve it.

I'm out of this thread, good luck to Cloudflare solving the issue.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

noroad

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#2172615 4-Feb-2019 09:13

Talkiet:

Wow. Several factual inaccuracies and an oblique comparison of Spark to Trump. I'm out. While there is a mature, fact based and sensible response in me, you don't deserve it.

I'm out of this thread, good luck to Cloudflare solving the issue.

Cheers - N

hahaha... yea, fake news is what you are trying to say then? I bet you don't want to quantify the "inaccuracies".

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